This is not a local British Columbia story, other than Pedro Brieger is a friend of mine and Canada has 13 million Roman Catholics, some of whom might be interested in how their pope goes to bat for journalists.
As one of the most prominent journalists in Argentina, Pedro Brieger held down hosting positions on many TV and radio programs, including on public networks financed by the government (like Canada’s CBC and Britain’s BBC).
With 51,000 Twitter followers and 178,000 Facebook likes, centre-left Brieger proudly upheld reform-minded positions on most of Latin America’s burning subjects.
In addition to being a fellow board member of the International Association of Religion Journalists, multi-award-winning Brieger is the founder of an extremely popular Spanish-language news aggregator called Nodal.
Argentinian Pope Francis has closer relationships with journalists than previous popes. He recently asked why one of Argentina’s most prominent journalists was terminated from public TV and radio.
Despite his fame, Brieger was recently summarily terminated from all his jobs for Argentina’s public broadcaster.
And it happened soon after centre-right Marucio Macri was elected in December as the new president of Argentina.
Where does Pope Francis come in?
The pope, of course, is from Argentina. And one of the pope’s confidantes asked officials at the public broadcaster, on the pope’s behalf, why Brieger was terminated.
Brieger, who speaks many languages (and has Jewish roots, for what it’s worth), told me a bit of the story by email:
“An Argentinian activist and politician, Gustavo Vera, an old friend of Cardinal Bergoglio {Pope Francis), who worked together with him against child labour in the textile industry, recently visited the Pope.
He came back from the Vatican and was invited on public TV to speak about his visit.
When he was leaving he asked one of the directors, “What happened with Brieger?”
The director answered that I wanted to leave. (That is absolutely false). Since the director was astonished about the question, he asked “Why are you asking?”
Answer: “Because the Pope asked me what happened with Brieger on public TV?”
Then the story spread and people began to tell me that the Pope asked about me.
I asked Gustavo Vera himself about the story and he confirmed it.
Therefore, a few days ago I spoke about it on a Sunday TV show, where I´m working now and have a very big audience. I Tweeted about it. And thanked Pope Francis for asking about me.”
{Note: Gustavo Vera is one of the few people who is welcomed to sleep overnight at Santa Marta, the residence of Pope Francis in the Vatican. “Most of the people who visit the Pope don´t sleep there, just his good friends,” says Brieger.}
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